When William Poole’s grandparents found a notebook filled with death and murder and high school in their 18 year old charge’s room they must not have known what to do. Talk to him about it? Try to understand him? Respect his privacy?

…call the police?

Winchester police say William Poole, 18, was taken into custody Tuesday morning. Investigators say they discovered materials at Poole’s home that outline possible acts of violence aimed at students, teachers, and police.

Poole told LEX 18 that the whole incident is a big misunderstanding. He claims that what his grandparents found in his journal and turned into police was a short story he wrote for English class.

Well, it must have been a horific and realistic story involving real people and potentially occurring events to be used as evidence of terrorism right?

“the short story they found was about zombies. Yes, it did say a high school. It was about a high school over ran by zombies.”

Even so, police say the nature of the story makes it a felony. “Anytime you make any threat or possess matter involving a school or function it’s a felony in the state of Kentucky,” said Winchester Police detective Steven Caudill.

1. This cop is an idiot, “matter involving a school or function”!?
2. The writing of anything (including, as Joey points out “I want to assassinate the president” over and over), let alone science-fiction, in one’s private residence is not only completely legal under any human rights respecting constitution, but a necessary component of any functioning society.

You have a problem America. You are broken, and you will have to admit it before anything can change.

[EDIT]
There is some reasonable talk going on concerning the varied and conflicting interpretations existing between the story Poole tells and that of the police.

On a blog post not unlike mine in intent an anonymous commenter claimed to be a student at the school in question. They said that Poole was arrested before for threatening to kill someone (during a physical fight) and that the town as a whole has been plagued by other teen violence (to which they attribute the local police’s sensitivity to the journal situation).

The author of the blog post also acknowledges that there really is only the two (the second, vaguer than the first can be found here) articles with very few details, and that it i s possible that the quotes about zombie stories could be A) a red herring from Poole, perhaps there was a zombie story as well as terrorist plans, B) A stupid stupid lie on Poole’s part, which is unlikely to have happened if he spoke with a lawyer before speaking but impossible to disprove until further reports are filed or the court documents are released, or a combination of both.